Playing politics
Soccer fever continued to rise for the second consecutive week. News of the game, be it local or international, continued to make it on the front page of many a paper.
Newspapers and magazines were awash with reports about the unprecedented high-ranking brawl during the Egyptian Cup final between the country's two football powerhouses Ahli and Zamalek. The dispute, which was initiated by Zamalek's outspoken President Murtada Mansour in the presence of the personal representative of President Hosni Mubarak, drew scathing critique from many writers. It inspired Ahmed Ayoub in Nahdet Misr to make fun of the deteriorating state in which one of Egypt's most famous clubs had reached. "I agree with [former football star] Taha Ismail when he called for the imposition of the emergency law on Zamalek Club in an attempt to save it from the crisis it's going through."
Fallout from the failure of Egyptian public TV to broadcast the World Cup matches persisted this week. Minister of Information Anas El-Fiqi was quoted as saying that broadcasting the matches would have cost the government LE144 million, a sum which could be used instead to build 144 schools or 288 hospitals. Emad Omar in the daily Al-Akhbar criticised the minister's statement, arguing that the network that won exclusive broadcasting rights made about $2 billion in revenues. "The government should provide a more convincing excuse for not buying the broadcasting rights of the matches," said Omar. "Given that the cabinet is formed mostly of businessmen, the government must admit it should have calculated it in terms of the profits [it could have made from buying the rights of broadcasting the event]."
Some papers voiced their support for the only two Arab teams in the World Cup, despite the fact that they were soundly defeated and are highly unlikely to qualify for the second round. "We're all behind Tunisia and Saudi Arabia," ran the headline of the sports page in Al-Akhbar.
Sports critic Alaa Sadeq launched a scathing attack against Ghanaian player John Pantsil who waved the Israeli flag after Ghana scored against the Czech Republic. "The player's act reveals a great deal of ignorance and stupidity," wrote Sadek in the daily Al-Akhbar. "Nobody knows why he waved the Israeli flag in front of the cameras while Israel is not one of the two sides or even in the competition." Pantsil does play for a club in Israel.
A story in Al-Masry Al-Yom stressed that the Egyptian football fans were greatly upset when they saw the Ghanaian player waving the Israeli flag. "A lot of fans paid much to watch the Ghana-Czech match, and they remained cheering and enthusiastically supporting every Ghanaian attempt on the Czech goal," said the report. "Any passerby would have thought it was the Egyptian, not the Ghanaian team, that was playing. The Egyptian fans were sincerely supporting the African team until this player, John Pantsil, turned things upside down by waving the Israeli flag after scoring Ghana's second goal," the report continued.
"Are we supporting Ghana or Israel?" wondered a dismayed fan who was watching the match at a café. "This [Ghanaian] team doesn't deserve the Egyptians' support," commented another. "After what they did, they destroyed our sympathy for them," said another fan.
The report said many spectators thought the player had been paid by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad.
The thanawiya amma (secondary school certificate) exams are being conducted in the middle of the World Cup, but that was not the only bad news for the high schoolers. Al-Masry Al-Yom reported that most students wept because the English and physics exams had in their estimation been very difficult. The paper also reported that a female student put an end to her life after the English exam by taking a dose of pesticide, having felt that she would definitely fail.
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